By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The fate of nearly 2.3 million Democratic presidential primary votes belongs to 30 party activists.
The activists sit on the Democratic Party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, which was to meet Saturday to decide what role Michigan and Florida should play at the national convention in August.
Both states were banned from sending delegates to the meeting because they held primaries in January, too early for party rules. They were attempting to have greater influence on the presidential nominating process long dominated by Iowa and New Hampshire.
Now Democrats want to figure a way to include the two states in the convention because they will be important battlegrounds in the general election.
Just how many delegates to give each state and how to distribute them between the candidates was the vexing decision before the rules committee. Clinton supporters planned a protest to demand full seating of the 368 delegates from the two states — an unlikely outcome with committee members interested in punishing the two states to discourage future line jumpers.
By 8 a.m. Saturday some 200 people had gathered on a sidewalk outside the hotel where the committee was to meet. They waved homemade signs, blew party signs, and chanted “Every vote!” Hotel security staff kept watch over the crowd, shepherding people off the hotel grounds at times.
Beverly Battelle Weeks, 56, a Clinton delegate who got up well before dawn to drive up from Richmond, Va., carried a black umbrella on which she had pasted letters spelling out “Count All Votes.”
“The right thing to do is to seat all the delegates. Anything less is not democratic,” she said.
Hillary Rodham Clinton won both the Florida and Michigan contests after all the candidates agreed not to campaign in either state. At the time, she said the vote didn’t matter, but now she is trailing Barack Obama and wants to see her victories result in more delegates at the convention.
“It’s important to send the right signals to them and the people living in those states that we Democrats value those states, value those voters and want them as full partners in a general election in assembling 270 electoral votes,” said Clinton strategist Harold Ickes, a member of the rules committee.
Obama could afford to allow Clinton a few delegates — going into the meeting, he was just 42 away from the nomination out of more than 2,000 required. Clinton was more than 200 delegates behind.
The committee appeared to be leaning toward a compromise that would allow each state to restore half of its delegate count. That probably would add fewer than 30 more delegates to the total that Obama needs, with three more contests to go — Puerto Rico on Sunday and Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday.
Members of the committee discussed their options over a lengthy dinner with DNC Chairman Howard Dean that began Friday night and lasted until 2 a.m. Saturday. People who attended said no deals were reached, although there was a widespread sentiment that they should try to come up with some resolution that would put the issue behind them.
Obama campaign officials, eager to move on, said they were willing to give Clinton the edge in delegates, but they were not willing to accept the Clinton camp’s hard-line stance that all the delegates should be fully seated in accordance to the January elections.
“We have both fought hard throughout the country, both of us, for delegates and the fact that we’re willing to essentially cede her delegates we do not think is an insignificant gesture on our part,” Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said. “But we’re willing to do this in the interest of trying to bring this to a close so we can focus on the general election.”
Source:news.yahoo
By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer
SINGAPORE - Defense Secretary Robert Gates condemned Myanmar’s military government Saturday for being “deaf and dumb” to global offers of aid to its thousands of cyclone victims, but said the U.S. will not force assistance on the country.
Speaking at an international security conference, Gates also assured leaders the next White House administration would maintain a strong commitment to Asia and the rest of the world, no matter what political party wins the fall election.
While his speech focused most heavily on Asia relations — including subtle calls for China to work more amiably and fairly with other Pacific nations, Gates displayed the most emotion when talking about the loss of life in Myanmar.
“We have reached out, frankly, to Myanmar multiple times during this crisis in very direct ways,” Gates told an international audience. “It’s not been us that have been deaf and dumb in response to the pleas of the international community, but the government of Myanmar. We have reached out, they have kept their hands in their pockets.”
He said the military junta’s obstruction of international efforts to help cyclone victims cost “tens of thousands of lives,” he said.
With U.S., British and French Navy ships off the coast of Myanmar poised to leave because they have been blocked from delivering assistance to the ravaged country, Gates said the U.S. will not forcefully bring in supplies without permission of the government, and will continue to “respect the sovereignty” of Myanmar.
The growing displeasure with the Myanmar government has permeated this week’s conference on international security, coming up in nearly all conversations between leaders from around the world. Officials have indicated that they are about to withdraw the U.S. Navy ships within days, since it does not appear that the Myanmar government will change its mind and allow the vessels to unload their supplies.
Gates met with his top Pacific commander Saturday to discuss the pullout, but a final decision has not yet been made.
In a wide-ranging speech, Gates looked ahead to the next White House administration, saying the new U.S. president will inherit the worrisome issue of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions but will continue America’s enduring commitment to Asia.
While he said he could not make specific policy predictions for the next administration, Gates told the annual Shangri-la conference that there will be “no change in our drive to temper North Korea’s ambitions, a policy not possible without China’s valued cooperation.”
Despite the often divergent views of the Republican and Democratic candidates, Gates said he is confident that the strong U.S. ties to Asia will continue “no matter which political party occupies the White House next year.”
When a questioner suggested that the U.S. may not have the time, the money or the energy to maintain interest in Asia, he quoted former President Gerald Ford, saying, “we ought to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.”
The U.S., he said, has the resources and desire to deal with all parts of the world at the same time.
Gates speech sounded two distinct tones on China — at times extending a friendly hand and at others offering a subtle but somber warning.
Gates first noted that relations with the communist giant have improved, and that leaders have begun a series of discussions on issues to “help us understand one another better, and to avoid possible misunderstanding.”
A long-sought direct telephone link between the U.S. and China has finally been established, and Gates said he used it recently to speak with the defense minister.
On the other hand, Gates took unmistakable jabs at China without mentioning its name, calling, for example, for greater openness about military modernization in Asia.
In recent annual reports the Pentagon has criticized China for its massive military buildup, saying its motives and spending are unclear.
“We desire to work with every country in Asia to deepen our understanding of their military and defense finances, and to do so on a reciprocal basis,” Gates said.
Lack of such clarity, Gates said, can lead to outright suspicion.
In response, the top ranking Chinese official at the forum took aim at U.S. missile defense policies — which include plans for anti-missile defenses with Japan, as well as the deployment of missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Lt. Gen. Ma Xiaotian, deputy chief of the General Staff for the People’s Liberation Army, said developing such an offensive — rather than purely defensive — system could tip the balance of power and threaten peace.
“We do not support either side to take the initiative to break the balance,” he said. He also said dismissed claims that China’s military is dramatically expanding. China’s spending on defense, he said, is low.
Gates has consistently sounded a more conciliatory tone toward China, which he visited late last year for high-level meetings with the country’s leaders. However, relations have been strained by revelations in March that the U.S. military mistakenly delivered fuses for long-range missiles to Taiwan, triggering a strong protest from Beijing.
In another veiled reference to China, he said the U.S. presence in the region has opened doors and protected “common spaces on the high seas, in space and, more and more, in the cyber world.”
U.S. officials have suspected the Chinese of trying to hack into U.S. government computers. In one instance, a number of Pentagon computers had to be taken off line for several days — but officials never openly blamed China.
Gates is scheduled to leave Singapore on Sunday and then visit defense leaders in Thailand and South Korea
Source:news.yahoo
By FOSTER KLUG, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - North Korea has not been linked to a terrorist attack in more than two decades, but it is still on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. Now, it may be on the verge of its coveted goal of getting removed — for reasons having little to do with terrorism.
Meanwhile, Washington has what appears to be fresh evidence that Venezuela supported Colombian guerrillas that the U.S. considers terrorists. Yet the terrorism list does not include Venezuela, a major oil supplier to the United States.
Nearly three decades after its inception, the state sponsors of terrorism list is not just about terrorism. It has become a diplomatic tool to win concessions from U.S. adversaries eager to end the stigma and sanctions that come with the designation. It may also be too blunt a tool to be used against strategically important countries, even if the terrorism link appears clear-cut.
“Of course the list is political,” said Bruce Hoffman, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University.
The United States has many blacklists for people, groups and countries it deems unsavory. But the state sponsors of terrorism list has perhaps the highest profile, though only five countries are on it: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.
Those countries designated by the U.S. face restrictions on foreign aid, a ban on defense sales and other sanctions that can hinder their acquiring U.S. technology or doing business with U.S. financial institutions.
The penalties can extend beyond U.S. borders. The United States will use its weight at the United Nations and world financial organizations to try to block assistance to designated countries. The designation could also discourage U.S. allies and multinational corporations from dealing with the designated nations.
By contrast, getting off the list is a sign of a return to the global community.
“This is exactly the purpose: to offer carrots and sticks to engage states and then to use this as a means to persuade them to desist from activities that we think are harmful to America,” Hoffman said.
The president may rescind the terror designation by submitting a report to Congress that certifies a country has changed policies and has provided assurances that it will not support future acts of terror.
But terrorism often is not the only factor that determines whether a country will be removed.
Libya got on the list because the U.S. blamed it for terrorist attacks that killed Americans in the 1980s. But it took more than its pledge to stop supporting terrorism and pay compensation to the families of terror victims to get it off the list in 2006; it also had to abandon its weapons of mass destruction programs.
James Lewis, a former State Department official who worked on sanctions in the Clinton administration, said the list gives the United States leverage on non-terrorism issues.
The message is: “Do the right thing and we’ll take you off the list,” said Lewis, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.
That appears to be the case with North Korea. Kim Jong Il’s government has not been tied directly to terrorism since its agents planted a bomb on a South Korean commercial jetliner in 1987. But there was little talk of removing the North from the list until it became a key point in international talks aimed at ending North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
Many in Japan, the top U.S. ally in Northeast Asia, do not want the designation lifted until Pyongyang accounts for Japanese citizens abducted by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s. Some U.S. lawmakers also oppose lifting the designation and have proposed legislation that would make it harder for President Bush to do so.
But there may be little hope of reaching a nuclear agreement that does not include taking North Korea off the list.
“Clearly, the state sponsors of terrorism list looms very large in the North Koreans’ thinking,” said Sharon Squassoni, an analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It is a black mark. You don’t want to be in the kind of company on that list: Iran, Cuba, Syria. It would be quite a step forward politically and symbolically.”
Cuba’s presence on the terrorism list has been questioned. It was added in 1982, during the Cold War, when Fidel Castro’s government supported leftist insurgents. The State Department says Cuba continues to oppose U.S. counterterrorism policy and has granted safe haven to members of terrorist groups.
Opponents of the designation question whether Cuba should be on the list. But with a powerful anti-Castro Cuban community in the U.S., it would be politically difficult for a U.S. administration to take Cuba off the list.
Some lawmakers say Cuba’s ally, Venezuela, should be added because of allegations that President Hugo Chavez has supported Colombian rebels. Computer files found in a leftist rebel camp in March implicated Venezuela as a guerrilla ally and have prompted criminal investigations. Venezuela denies the claims.
But while the Bush administration is highly critical of Chavez, it would have to pause before adding to the list a country that is the fourth-largest supplier of oil to the United States.
Asked about U.S. lawmakers’ call to list Venezuela, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said: “I’d steer people away from the notion that being put on the state sponsor of terrorism list is something that happens because it would be something people would like to have happen.
“It’s based on a very specific legal standard, and, whether it’s Venezuela or any other country, if they meet that standard, they’ll be put on that list, and if they don’t, they won’t.”
Source:news.yahoo
By LISA LEFF, Associated Press Writer
MARTINEZ, Calif. - For 18 years, Stephen Weir has been in charge of the office that hands out marriage licenses in California’s ninth-largest county. And for just as long, Weir has been unable to get a license himself because the love of his life is a man.
The irony did not escape him.
“Always the bridesmaid, never the bride,” he quips with a rueful smile.
So Weir hopes the citizens of Contra Costa County understand if their clerk-recorder invokes executive privilege and opens up for business a little early on June 17, when same-sex couples may be able to legally wed in California.
He and his partner, John Hemm, want to be first at the counter that day. They plan to be the first to exchange vows and kisses in the conference room Weir converted into a wedding chapel that hosts 1,200 couples a year, but that he could never use.
“I’ve waited all of this time to be able to walk into my own office and stand in line and pay what used to be $64 and now is $85 to buy a license and have a ceremony,” says Weir, who also is president of the state clerks association.
“It’s a big deal.”
To understand how exceptional it is for the 59-year-old Weir to bring his personal needs into his professional life, it’s helpful to know what a precarious line he’s had to tread during 35 years in city, state and county politics.
He spent nine years on the Concord City Council, two of them as mayor, but took pains to keep his sexual orientation a secret. Concerned he would be outed as gay in the high-profile position, he sought the county clerkship as “a safer place for me” when the longtime clerk died.
Within months of assuming the job, he had to oversee in his dual capacity as registrar of voters the counting of local ballots cast for a March 2000 initiative that strengthened California’s ban on gay marriage.
That same year, when Weir and Hemm were getting serious, he started taking Hemm to events where they would see other elected officials. If his colleagues thought differently about him afterward, they never let on, Weir says.
“I said to myself, ‘If he and I are going to be a couple, there is no hiding this thing anymore,’” he says.
For the most part, though, shouldering the contradictions he encountered at work came easily for Weir, who has spent his whole life in Contra Costa, a suburban county that is conservative by San Francisco Bay area standards.
He is the consummate civil servant, the type of administrator who waxes poetic about document scanning software.
Fulfilling his oath to perform his duties faithfully and according to the law has put Weir in some awkward positions, however. Every Valentine’s Day for the last five years or so, gay men and lesbians have gone to clerks’ counters throughout the country to request marriage licenses in a coordinated act of protest.
Every year, Weir has turned away those who showed up on his turf with a polite apology and a referral to the state government Web site where they could learn about registering as domestic partners, a step he and Hemm took in 2003.
In the meantime, Weir has officiated at about 20 weddings, mostly for friends and relatives but occasionally for couples who come to the clerk’s office.
Two years ago, as Valentine’s Day was approaching, some of his fellow clerks wanted their state association to put out a statement supporting a bill to legalize same-sex marriage. It fell to Weir, the group’s president, to remind them that their bylaws prohibited taking stands on legislation.
“People were respectful, but I know it was hard because they were trying to give me the legal rights I was seeking,” he says.
Weir looks the same way at his role in a pending ballot initiative that would again make gay marriage illegal. County clerks are responsible for verifying the signatures its sponsors have gathered to qualify the measure for the November ballot. He has stacks of petitions in his building right now and a roomful of employees going through them.
“We are doing that in an honorable way. We are discharging our duties as clerk. I didn’t ever think of it as anything other than a petition in the queue. I can’t let it,” he says.
If voters pass the amendment, it would overturn the California Supreme Court’s May 15 ruling legalizing same-sex marriage in the state. It could also, depending on the outcome of further legal proceedings, invalidate the marriages performed between now and then, including Weir and Hemm’s.
That’s a possibility that Weir, who will be busy on Nov. 4 making sure his county’s ballots are processed swiftly and accurately during the high turnout presidential election, can’t even contemplate.
“Only after I get that election to bed will I even begin to think about the issues I’m concerned with personally,” he says.
At home in Concord, Weir plays the comic foil to the more outgoing Hemm, 53, who works as a school crossing guard and costume designer. Like most long-term couples, they finish each other’s sentences and happily share the story of how they met in a San Francisco gym, drifted apart, and then reconnected after nine years.
Elderly neighbors brought them cookies when they moved in to their 1950s-era ranch house and watch their pets when they are away.
“If you are honest and yourself, there is no reason to feel like you are out of line,” Hemm says. “If you don’t carry that with you, you don’t see it in other people.”
Getting married would be the icing on the proverbial wedding cake, the men say, something they hoped would happen in their lifetimes, but the absence of which they did not let diminish the delight they take in each other.
One happy byproduct is that Weir should be able to get Hemm on his long-term health plan. They already have stood by each other in sickness and in health: Hemm has AIDS.
Source:news.yahoo
By WILLIAM FOREMAN, Associated Press Writer
MIANYANG, China - Chinese authorities had evacuated nearly 200,000 people by early Saturday and warned more than 1 million others to be ready to leave quickly as a lake formed by a devastating earthquake threatened to breach its dam.
The confirmed death toll from China’s worst quake in three decades was raised Saturday to 68,977, an increase of about 120 people from a day earlier. Another 17,974 people were still missing, the State Council said. The increase was the smallest since the government started issuing a daily death toll shortly after the quake hit.
Hundreds of Chinese troops have been working around the clock to drain Tangjiashan lake in Sichuan province. The lake formed above Beichuan town in the Mianyang region when a hillside plunged into a river valley during the May 12 quake that killed more than 68,000 people.
The official Xinhua News Agency said work on a runoff channel had been completed. It quoted Yue Xi, deputy chief of the water and electricity section of the People’s Armed Police, as saying water was expected to be discharged between Sunday and Tuesday.
Xinhua said 197,477 people were evacuated to safe ground by Saturday morning. It did not say how the exact number was arrived at, and many of the people may have moved just short distances to higher areas.
The news agency said Tan Li, the Communist Party chief of Mianyang, had issued another order that calling for all 1.3 million people in the area to be evacuated if “the barrier of the quake lake fully opens” and floods the area.
An official with the press office of Mianyang City Quake Control and Relief Headquarters, who would give only her surname of Chen, said Saturday’s drill would involve testing the command system of various levels of government officials to ensure that any order to evacuate — if it comes — would be passed on quickly to everyone in the valley.
No public broadcast of the evacuation order would take place.
There was no sign that the dam was about to burst. Troops have sealed off Beichuan to the public.
Tangjiashan is the largest of more than 30 lakes that have formed behind landslides caused by the quake, which also weakened man-made dams in the mountainous parts of the disaster zone.
Millions of people in Sichuan are already living in tent camps and prefabricated housing, which have taken on the tone of new villages.
In Mianyang, about 200 families left their camps in flood-prone areas of the city and moved to higher ground in a wooded park on Fule Mountain. Most had camping tents and shelters made of tarp pitched under trees amid ornate gazebos and tea houses with tradition sloping yellow tiled roofs. Red signs on the buildings said, “Dangerous building, don’t come near.”
One woman, who only gave her surname, Wang, said life was uncomfortable but fine under the circumstances. “We’ve got all the basics. Those who are out of work are being given food, but my company is taking care of me,” said Wang, who was living in a camouflaged camping tent set above the ground on wood planks.
A man who also only gave his surname, Zhang, said his family of three has received no food or shelter since they followed orders to move to the camp two days ago.
“I had to rig this up myself,” he said, pointing to the simple structure of tarps they were living under. “We’ve just been eating instant noodles and bread that we brought ourselves.”
Nearby, a woman selling tomatoes, green peppers and eggplants along the narrow park road was loading the vegetables back on her three-wheel motorcycle cart. “I’m packing things up because no one is buying,” she said. “They have no pots or pans. No way to cook the food.”
Xinhua also reported that President Hu Jintao arrived Saturday to check on relief efforts in Shaanxi province. Just to the north of Sichuan, Shaanxi also suffered damage in the May 12 earthquake.
Source:news.yahoo
President Bush, linking the wars of his tenure to the deadliest one in history, is posted the globe to commit anew to postwar rebuilding.
In an address for Wednesday to a larger amount of as opposed to 1,000 graduates of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Bush frames the futures by drawing going back to the World War II generation. He links the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to postwar Germany and Japan six ages ago.
“America has alleged now obligation before,” Bush assumed in expected remarks released by the White House. “After World War II we helped Germany and Japan compose free of charge societies and stable economies. These efforts took age and patience, and as a result Germany and Japan grew in freedom and success and are now allies of the United States.”
The result, Bush says, was “generations of security and peace” in the United States.
“Today we ought to do the same in Afghanistan and Iraq,” he reads in the set comments. “And by helping these kinds of young democracies augment in freedom and affluence we is planning to once yet again reap the assistance in generations of security and peace.”
Today’s wars are not during yet. As reconstruction unfolds, the enemy continues battling — not nationwide militaries but a complex mix of militias and terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Another difference: It will be in debate over the planet whether the pre-emptive Iraq war has bolstered U.S. security or weakened it. Bush has expressed no doubts it was warranted.
At lowest 4,085 U.S. military workers undergo died in the Iraq war. More as opposed to 430 staff of the U.S. military suffer died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department.
The U.S. death toll in World War II was just about 406,000. Overall, tens of millions of borrowers died. The conflict revised the globe; primary U.S. enemies of too day, Germany and Japan, re-emerged as essential allies.
Bush’s speech was prepared to compare air electricity and warfare techniques of World War II and today. He as well was to slang roughly the differences in the enemies such a U.S. forces face.
White House drive secretary Dana Perino argued Bush might zero in on one constant — “that freedom has the gas to overcome tyranny and convert societies.” That theme has underpinned Bush’s global policy and was the calling of his time inaugural address.
The president is on a three-day trip throughout one states. The purpose is typically to gain currency for Republicans, somewhat Bush is still stable at a great deal as his diminish wanes.
After the commencement, Bush was going to Utah for two closed occurreneces to gain funds for John McCain, the Arizona senator and presumptive Republican presidential nominee, and a good amount of GOP candidates. Bush had a similar occurence on Tuesday in Arizona, expanding an anticipated $3 million.
A Democratic Party guidelines committee has the authority to seat certain delegates of Michigan and Florida but not completely restore the two displays as Hillary Rodham Clinton wants, according to party lawyers.
Democratic National Committee guidelines motivate this the two displays cost at the very least portion of the convention delegates for possessing elections too early, the party’s legal institutions wrote in a 38-page memo.
The memo was sent late Tuesday to the 30 constituents of the party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, that plans to balance Saturday at a Washington hotel. The committee is given ways to input the two sizeable entire election battlegrounds at the nominating convention in August, and the realtors analysis states seating side the delegates is “as far as it officially can” go.
Saturday’s meeting is predicted to appeal a substantial crowd, amongst Clinton supporters with people encouraging a protest outside demanding the current all the states’ delegates be seated. Proponents of comprehensive reseating suffer mailed committee workers Florida oranges and pairs of shoes to get the attention.
DNC supervisors are worried close to a potentially ample turnout at the “Count Every Vote” rally outside the worry and own queried the hotel constituents to increase in value security to keep anyone safe. The DNC claims the about 500 seats around to the public inside got taken in 3 or uni moments of coming across as accessible online Tuesday.
The DNC analysis performs not provide recommendations for how the Rules and Bylaws Committee given that vote, but supplies context based on what i read in the party’s charter and bylaws for the committee to consider.
The analysis declared there are two choices to insert side the delegations — either permit portion the quantity of delegates out of every neighborhood to the convention or aide the comprehensive delegations to attend, but find them every part a vote. “The vital performs not in essence specify whether the lowering is to be accomplished on the motive of delegate positions or delegate votes,” the analysis said, initiating committee employees a small amount of justification for sending the overall delegations amidst half-votes as a good deal of leaders in the argues want.
The analysis moreover underscores a prickly problem: If the Rules and Bylaws Committee decides to restore any of the states’ delegates, there is not a child’s way to divide them between Clinton and Barack Obama.
That’s exceptionally real in Michigan, at which Obama had his and cr pulled based on data from the ballot. He did not suffer the opportunity of removing his and cr in Florida, but all the aspirants signed a pledge not to campaign in either state.
Clinton won the majority of the vote in Florida and Michigan and has carried on stating who the delegates could be utterly restored according to the consequences of the January primaries. But that much if properties were, it could not be sufficient for her to overtake Obama’s delegate lead.
As it gets obvious so Obama perhaps serves to win the nomination, he has carried on endeavoring to win more than voters in the two displays amid visits in newly made days. He plans to send back to Michigan on Monday.
The DNC workforces analysis says too the Rules and Bylaws Committee was completely in its rights to strip all 368 delegates according to the two argues when properties scheduled primaries in January. Party plan stated the nominating contests should be no in the past as opposed to Feb. 5. Michigan voted on Jan. 15, Florida on Jan. 29.
The analysis furthermore declared there is an selection to restore 100 per cent of the delegates — by a recommendation of the Credentials Committee the meets afterward their summer. However, the can make for a ultimate decision might not be drew up until the initial day of the convention in Denver from the time of Credentials Committee decisions experience to be voted for by the comprehensive convention as it convenes — chancing a bottom fight.
Alice Huffman, a member of the Rules and Bylaws Committee based on California who is supporting Clinton, believed she has continued barraged amidst e-mails in the out of few weeks. She stated the senders list Floridians who are irate this properties are making disenfranchised, and she has began printing out the messages so she’ll undergo a zenith to explain her decision.
“This is a really, remarkably vital predicament to women. Obviously it is a significant item to those of color too. So I’m easily preparing for one as highest quality I can,” alleged Huffman, president of the California NAACP.
The shoe shipments are making organized by WalkAMileInOurShoes.org and1 the orange notion was promoted by a board referred to as Florida Demands Representation, that plans to bus Floridians to Saturday’s rally outside the meeting. Blaine Whitford, a volunteer helping organize the effort, declared properties are unaligned provided any candidate.
Susie Buell, one of Clinton’s top fundraisers, has made a political action committee encouraging women to substantiation complete seating of the delegates
Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan inserts in a new memoir the current President Bush relied on an aggressive “political propaganda campaign” in its place of the thing to market the Iraq war, it has been heard reported.
The Bush White House constructed “a decision to turn away out of candor and honesty when folks qualities got several needed” — a little bit when the earth was on the brink of war, McClellan enters in the book privy “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.”
The way Bush strive the Iraq question “almost sure the current the use of require can become the clearly practical option,” the book contends, according to accounts Wednesday in The New York things and Washington Post.
“In the permanent campaign era, it was all on manipulating resources of public perception to the president’s advantage,” McClellan writes.
White House assists seemed stunned by the scathing tone of the book, and Bush drive secretary Dana Perino handed out a statement which was highly drastic of the former colleague.
“Scott, we now know, is disgruntled just about his have at the White House,” she said. “For persons of us who completely supported him, before, within and in the wake of he was push secretary, we are puzzled. It is sad - that is not the Scott we knew.”
Perino stated the reads on the book had been heard depicted to Bush, and who she did not suppose him to comment. “He has supplementary pressing topics as opposed to to spend long time commenting on books by former staffers,” she said.
The book provoked steady reactions of former staffers as well.
“For him to do right now now strikes me as self-serving, disingenuous and unprofessional,” Fran Townsend, former struggle of the White House-based counterterrorism office, informed CNN.
Said former top let Karl Rove, in an interview amidst Fox News Channel: “If he had such moral qualms, he can hold spoken up virtually them. And frankly I do not remember him talking up regarding these types of things. I do not remember a single word.”
Richard Clarke, an additional former counterterrorism adviser who furthermore came out surrounded by a book monumental of administration policy, assumed he am able to appreciate McClellan’s thinking, however. Clarke informed CNN which he, too, was harshly criticized, claiming such a “I can verify you the tire tracks.”
McClellan referred to as the Iraq war a “serious strategic blunder,” a surprisingly harsh assessment according to the man who was at such a age the loyal public voice of the White House.
“The Iraq war was not necessary,” he concludes.
McClellan admits such a specific of his own sayings based on the podium in the White House briefing room turned out to be “badly misguided.” But he suggests he was sincere at the time.
“I fell far very brief of leading up to the brand of public servant I wanted to be,” McClellan writes. He in addition blames the media whose concerns he fielded, calling them “complicit enablers” in the White House campaign to manipulate public belief toward the wish for war.
The book is scheduled to go on cash in on June 1. Quotes for the book got reported Tuesday night by the Web site Politico, that believed it discovered McClellan’s memoir on sale the beginning of at a bookstore.
McClellan draws a portrait of his former boss as smart, charming and politically skilled, but unwilling to admit mistakes and susceptible to his own spin. Bush “convinces himself to agree how suits his needs at the moment,” McClellan writes.
He too faults Bush for a “lack of inquisitiveness.”
The day subsequent to the Florida recount was brought to an abrupt end in 2000 by the Supreme Court, Connecticut Senator and former vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman was returning at managed in the Senate. “It was especially necessary to me to turn up perfect going back to work, I am sure it was my nature, but I figure it was a lot of people’s nature,” Lieberman said, standing clearly off the Senate ground survive week as his Republican colleague Bob Bennett occurred to pass by.
“He’s one who assembled the tweak in nearly 30 seconds. There’re a small amount of who had a miniscule amount bit additionally need originating back,” argued Bennett, a Republican who represents Utah. Looking archly at Hillary Clinton, merely steps away, he added: “There’re select even walking roughly fancy President in exile.”
Clinton’s brief departure out of the campaign trail up to Capitol Hill go on week was a jarring reminder of how awaits her if, as a large amount of expect, she fails to win the Democratic nomination. As she weighs her end up with to the Senate, Clinton is in the uncomfortable position of making the focus of continuing to additionally scrutiny and speculation as opposed to when she entered the chamber in 2001. Still rather junior in terms of party seniority and amongst no committee chairmanship electricity base in sight, Clinton have to tweak to a deliberative person at which 17 of her colleagues openly supported her rival - and continue to others ought to feel she has divided the party by dragging out the race.
Many suffer speculated this Clinton, as a type of consolation prize on the further part of Pennsylvania Avenue, are able to instigate a happy Majority Leader. But persons working at the speculating merely do not can appreciate the way the Senate works. Not simply is majority leader particularly a tedious, behind-the-scenes managerial position, but the most recent holder of that position, Harry Reid of Nevada, is a lot other popular in his party as opposed to outsiders realize, and his main deputies, Dick Durbin and Charles Schumer, own the own ambitions. Senators seek a leader properties can use at any hour provided objections - in a greater number of phrases properties covet a referee, not a superstar. “The Senate needs to strive on an hourly basis, a lot of labor-intensive work, and it is a considerable shift when you have continued talking at a a few altitude to turn up going back and get faced in the nuts and bolts of the Senate literally 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and that is how [being Majority Leader] involves,” claimed Senator Chris Dodd, who himself just now paid back from what i read in the presidential field and is one of the 17 who enacted Barack Obama.
Dodd and Senator Joe Biden, a new former Democratic presidential hopeful, both took solace in this respective committees upon such a returns. Dodd, who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, was right away swamped by the subprime loan crisis. “I haven’t had a second to reside on” the Presidential race, Dodd joked. Likewise, Biden, who heads up the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has kept on busy in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, hosting General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker the previous period for hearings. “You might not pay me, short of no things may I fancy to be majority leader,” Biden believed surrounded by a chuckle.
The vast majority of presidential wannabes who provide to the Senate end up desire Dodd and Biden, deciding on a legislative, instead as opposed to leadership, direction - satisfied in on presiding through your own fiefdom as leg work of a committee, or sponsoring a pivotal piece of legislation, quite as opposed to logging favors and whipping unruly workers to sequence for votes. “The leadership track is one the present is as good as so all-consuming it is fairly hard to devote the respect to a larger number of committees this otherwise become a big portion of any senator’s life,” stated Tom Daschle, a former Democratic Senate majority leader and an Obama supporter.
Celebrity politicians hold often had a hard era triumphant Senate popularity contests. West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, for example, wrested Ted Kennedy’s No. 2 slot on him in 1971 in side due to the fact that of Kennedy’s fame. “Byrd shocked me by defeating Kennedy,” declared Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia. “Why? Other Democratic senators saw Kennedy as a countrywide suppose who ought to use the Senate put up as a platform for his own ambitions, additonally Byrd was viewed as a Senate-based persona who may spend his long period of time and energies being senators’ livlihoods directed well. Nothing’s changed. Senators fancy a leader who may represent the own interests first.”
Byrd had these kinds of solid credentials in the Senate this six decades subsequently he beat party celebrity Hubert Humphrey, former vice president underneath Lyndon Johnson and 1968 Democratic presidential nominee, to become Senate Minority Leader in 1977. Byrd did so once running for President himself the year before, but he ran merely in his housing state, and acknowledged at the little bit overly he was a larger amount of interested in most massive the Senate as opposed to the country. Aside from what i read in Byrd, the longest serving senator in office, no !no! former Democratic candidate in newly drafted history has won a leadership role in the Senate. “I do not see Senator Clinton picking a position in the formal Democratic Party leadership in the Senate, but rather paying off her committee positions and public stature to play an monumental legislative and political role,” assumed Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “Reid and Durbin’s positions are guaranteed and Clinton’s comparative assistance do not connect good to such a jobs.”
Kennedy, who unsuccessfully challenged Jimmy Carter for President in 1980, channeled his energies to program upon his come up with to the Senate, looking the numerous prodigious lawmaker of the outside of half-century. “There’s a transition, obviously, moving from what i read in a candidate for the presidency going back to the Senate, but I loved the Senate before I ran,” Kennedy said. Like Kennedy, Clinton has had the advantage and curse of a above average public profile ever since entering the Senate as a former First Lady in 2001. Returning to the Senate now following owning won millions of votes and mentioned over a hundred dollars of millions of dollars, Clinton are able to shoot treatment to a legislative agenda, these kinds of as quality of life care, the current few senators can match. “A leadership role to convert quality of life service in America ought to be a likely for her,” claimed Stephen Schneck, a political science professor at Catholic University in Washington. “Given her skills and company on well being care, it is easy to concur the present she’d be able to construct a solid coalition of validation on the Hill for the present and within the duration of the Washington policy locations - much perhaps bringing in certain Republicans.”
First, though, Clinton has selected fence mending to do through her colleagues. And, ultimately, she may figure out it is not quality it, Sabato said. “Clinton may be energetic in the Senate,” he said. “She came tantalizingly finishing to making the a good number of powerful past customer in the world. Being one of 100 in a person who is part the Congress is a horrible substitute. Losing presidential applicants suffer a hard period readjusting, as John Kerry can attest.” Though as Clinton is proving in presently Presidential race, she is perhaps to stick right about the Senate a lot longer as opposed to the majority of everybody assume
By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Call them Kool-Aid drinkers. Political romantics. Starry-eyed dreamers.
But as the marathon Democratic primary campaign nears an end, Barack Obama’s staff is on the verge of vindicating its belief that the eloquent black freshman senator from Illinois was a unique candidate who could win the Democratic nomination in one of the biggest upsets in presidential politics.
The band of Obama loyalists who imagined that could happen have stunned even themselves with their success against Hillary Rodham Clinton, who appeared to have wrapped up the nomination last year, before any votes were cast. Now, they face a new challenge with the impending nomination and campaign against Republican John McCain.
If they succeed, many team members could be helping run the country eight months from now. Presidents often appoint campaign advisers to top administration jobs.
The team was led by calm and focused campaign manager David Plouffe; their strategy was inspired by the candidate’s experience as a community organizer. They built a campaign designed to accomplish what other political sensations like Gary Hart and Howard Dean failed to do — turn the energy and excitement of the Obama phenomenon into long-term results.
“I think everyone knew realistically that he was starting as an underdog,” said longtime friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett. “But I don’t think he would have started down this path with a team that didn’t think he would win. It was going to be an uphill battle, but in the end I think we were all confident that it could be done and that he could do it.”
Matching Obama’s organizing background, the team has roots in conducting on-the-ground congressional campaigns across the country. Many top aides were groomed by former House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt and former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle instead of by the Clinton wing of the party. Clinton’s team was built with Washington and New York operatives.
From its experience in congressional races, the Obama team understood firsthand the extent of Clinton fatigue in the heartland and the lesson of the 2006 midterm elections: America wants change.
Obama’s chief directive for hiring the more than 700 staff members who eventually came to work for him was: No Drama Allowed. Obama’s even demeanor is reflected in the advisers closest to him. While Clinton’s campaign divided into conflicting power centers whose emotional disputes leaked publicly, any fights in the Obama campaign were kept in the family.
Plouffe embodies Obama’s vision — a steady and unemotional number cruncher averse to the limelight, able to tune out noise and focus on the moves needed to reach the end game. Plouffe was the mastermind of Obama’s long-range campaign plan that looked beyond the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday primaries that Clinton had predicted would deliver the nomination to her. He dispatched staff to states that Clinton’s campaign overlooked, particularly small caucus states where intensive organization produced wins that swelled Obama’s delegate lead.
A Gephardt guy, Plouffe had worked on campaigns that went broke, so he was notoriously cheap. Obama attracted a talented staff willing to work for much less than they could have made with Clinton. Plouffe carefully minded the bank account to preserve enough money to keep running after the wildly expensive Super Tuesday contests while Clinton’s campaign went broke. She had to lend it $11.4 million to stay afloat.
In the month after Super Tuesday, Obama won 11 straight contests and took a delegate lead that Clinton has not been able to erase.
That’s not to say Obama’s campaign plan worked flawlessly. The initial plan was to turn a win in Iowa into a win in New Hampshire that would make his nomination unstoppable, but Clinton defeated him in New Hampshire and the campaign dragged on for months.
Now the team must reunite the fractured party and introduce Obama to a whole new swath of voters as he takes on a well-known war hero with bipartisan appeal. The campaign is rapidly adding new people, like experienced communications strategist Anita Dunn, who is married to campaign general counsel Bob Bauer and recently joined Obama’s inner circle.
Obama’s other closest advisers:
• David Axelrod, a former newspaper columnist who shares Obama’s talent with words, is the most experienced and visible political strategist. An idealist who exudes enthusiasm for his candidate, Axelrod helps buck Obama up on the road. Also from Chicago, he can play down-and-dirty politics with a Midwestern smile.
• Jarrett, who has helped guide Obama’s entire political career, brings blunt assessments only a longtime friend can provide. Jarrett has known the Obamas since before they were married, when she hired Michelle to work for Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. Known to be cool under pressure, she stepped up her campaign role last fall when Obama was a distant second to Clinton. Bringing a fresh outsider perspective, she held staff accountable.
• Pete Rouse, who has run Obama’s Senate office, is known for loyalty and a self-effacing manner. Rouse brings expert knowledge of Washington to a team based in Chicago. He protects Obama’s standing in the capital city and has brought in other D.C. operatives, particularly from the Daschle fold where he used to run things.
• Robert Gibbs, who has been at Obama’s side since his Senate campaign, is communications director. A Southerner and tough fighter, Gibbs is a passionate defender and can channel the candidate’s thoughts. He’s also among a few who can frankly tell Obama what needs to improve.
• Michelle Obama, the candidate’s wife, is his closest confidant. She often says, “I’m not his senior adviser, I’m his wife.” But she also talks about how dinner conversations about their family are what’s in his mind when he’s crafting policy. She’s the ultimate truth teller to the candidate; he calls her for feedback after debates. She has led the campaign’s outreach to female voters: As a lawyer and hospital executive, she provides evidence that Obama respects strong women even as he’s campaigning against one.
Another crucial adviser is Steve Hildebrand, who oversaw state-by-state efforts to run up Obama wins. Other key team members are finance chairwoman Penny Pritzker, finance director Julianna Smoot, policy director Heather Higginbottom, scheduling director Alyssa Mastromonaco, deputy communications director Dan Pfeiffer, national press secretary Bill Burton, economics adviser Austan Goolsbee and foreign policy aides Anthony Lake and Susan Rice.
Source:news.yahoo
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